Except the subjunctive almost completely lost its initial semantic value of expressing the hypothetical or fictious in French, and in most cases has been replaced by the indicative. (Contrast with languages like Italian or Spanish that did retain the subjunctive in these cases, and look at the (many) situations where the indicative is used in French and the subjunctive is used in Italian/Spanish). These days, the subjunctive is mainly used in clauses where an infinitive could be used (pour qu'il ait/pour avoir, sans qu'il ait/sans avoir, etc.) In that sense, après qu'il ait, on top of feeling more "natural" due to the symmetry with avant qu'il ait, isn't as outrageous an error as académiciens would have you believe, it simply follows this very handy rule of thumb.
Generally speaking, proper use of tenses and moods is overrated; it is inconsistent across Romance languages yet speakers of either have no difficulty making themselves understood, or learning others' systems. Many non-Romance languages dispense entirely with this system and yet their speakers don't encounter any difficulties expressing the same shades of meaning as they would in French.
> Except the subjunctive almost completely lost its initial semantic value of expressing the hypothetical or fictious in French
That’s definitely not true, and what follows is thus complete bs sorry. Where does this come from to begin with? I even miss Spanish’ subjunctive future in French!
It’s not only a mistake wrt the language rules but also a logical one, if intended initially to state facts.
> Generally speaking, proper use of tenses and moods is overrated
Wiping your butt after pooping is overrated too, you should try the opposite.
To order a coffee maybe, but there is definitely something more interesting in (not only) french.
That’s what makes a language more or less concise and elegant. You can express countless shades of meanings in pure arid arithmetic too, but yet...
>That’s definitely not true, and what follows is thus complete bs sorry. Where does this come from to begin with?
Alright I have my trusty Grammaire espagnole (Beschrelle) at hand, and here are the differences in use of the subjunctive. The following cases involve the indicative in Spanish and the subjunctive in French:
-A concessive clause, whose opposition relies on a reality-grounded fact (aunque està lloviendo/bien qu'il pleuve)
-A relative clause after a superlative or similar adjectives expressing the idea of "first", "unique", uses the subjunctive in French. The comparison point being grounded in reality, Spanish always uses the indicative. (la mejor secretaria que hemos tenido/la meilleure secrétaire que nous ayons eue).
Conversely, here are cases where Spanish uses the subjunctive and French uses the indicative:
-Expressing a condition, hypothesis or hypothetic comparison after si (si vinieras conmigo/si tu venais avec moi)
-Expressing a supposition (quiza ella esté al tanto/peut-être qu'elle est au courant)
-Temporal clauses in the future (Cuando venga/Quand il viendra)
I can go on if you like. Very clearly, Spanish's use of the subjunctive very closely follows the hypothetical/unrealized aspect of the content, whereas French's use is less consistent with that aspect, and mostly depends on the locution being used.
>I even miss Spanish’ subjunctive future in French!
And yet I'm sure you don't have any problems expressing the hypothetical and/or fictious in Spanish, do you? At least hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers don't.
>Wiping your butt after pooping is overrated too, you should try the opposite.
Seeing how mood use is inconsistent from one Romance language to the other, I guess Spanish and Italian speakers aren't wiping their butts according to your point of view (and you aren't wiping yours according to them). Or...we could just stop adopting such a normative attitude and admit usage changes across countries and time periods without anything being reprehensible about it?
>That’s what makes a language more or less concise and elegant. You can express countless shades of meanings in pure arid arithmetic too, but yet...
Are you seriously arguing that languages that lack the tense and mood system of Romance languages are somehow less elegant and concise, or less able to express countless shades of meaning somehow?
> I can go on if you like. Very clearly, Spanish's use of the subjunctive very closely follows
Oh yes go on please.
But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish".
> I guess Spanish and Italian speakers aren't wiping their butts according to your point of view
I think you missed the point. It was meant to say that misuse of tenses and moods may alter causality and in general events chaining is not commutative (poop o wipe != wipe o poop).
> And yet I'm sure you don't have any problems expressing the hypothetical
> Are you seriously arguing that languages that lack the tense and mood system
By the very definition of "concise", yes.
I said you can do it in any language, but the formulation at some point will become cumbersome.
>But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish".
I said almost lost, and I'm choosing to believe out of charity that you didn't notice the extra word.
> But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish".
Yes, that's the crux of my argument, comparing use cases in French with that of other Romance languages in order to show how far the subjunctive use cases in French drifted from their original purpose and meaning. How else am I supposed to demonstrate it without a couple of reference points to compare with?
> It was meant to say that misuse of tenses and moods may alter causality and in general events chaining is not commutative (poop o wipe != wipe o poop).
I did take your point a little too literally, sorry. Still, the fact that mood and tense use across Romance languages is inconsistent, yet:
-People who speak either Romance language have no trouble distinguishing the actual from the hypothetical within their language, and
-People who speak multiple Romance languages have no trouble switching from one mood to the other according to the use case/language combination at hand,
shows how unlikely your "poop o wipe" situations are in practice. People "misuse" tenses and moods all the time (which is the prescriptive way of saying tense and mood usage evolves all the time) yet they still manage to communicate clearly somehow. This shows that these are not actually central to convey meaning and there are other avenues that do not use this system (context, adverbial cues, etc.).
>I said you can do it in any language, but the formulation at some point will become cumbersome.
Do you have any evidence for this? Like, can you showcase foreign languages that do not feature this system and whose formulation of the hypothetical would prove consistently more cumbersome and verbose than that of Romance languages? I'm not sure if you realize how far-reaching that statement is.
Generally speaking, proper use of tenses and moods is overrated; it is inconsistent across Romance languages yet speakers of either have no difficulty making themselves understood, or learning others' systems. Many non-Romance languages dispense entirely with this system and yet their speakers don't encounter any difficulties expressing the same shades of meaning as they would in French.